Rofe – Introduction to the Literature of the Hebrew Bible

Students and scholars in the field of biblical studies will be familiar with numerous Introductions presenting the Hebrew Bible from a wide range of perspectives and methodologies. One may therefore wonder whether there is any need for yet another Introduction such as the one presented here. It goes without saying that the present book shares many things with previous Introductions; at the same time, its aim, scope and source of inspiration are very different from those that account for the standard Introductions, and I believe that these new aspects not only justify its publication but will also make it attractive to a quite varied readership.

 

To begin with, this Introduction is not simply focused on the Hebrew Bible; it is also much concerned with the critical study of biblical literature. This means that it is less interested in presenting the reader with all that is known on each and every biblical book, since such summaries of past research are readily available in all the standard Introductions and reference aids. Rather, my intention is to lay bare the successive steps taken by criticism in analysing biblical sources, such as the detection of contradictions in the text, the identification of sundry documents, and so forth. By this I intend to present the reader with a sound understanding of the methodology of biblical criticism, thus giving him or her tools to study the ancient texts on an independent basis. At the same time, I have freed myself from dogmatic positions (such as the partition of the Pentateuch into four documents, or the hypothesis that the Deuteronomistic History was composed and finalized in the mid-sixth century BCE), and I have made an effort to demonstrate that the composition of the biblical books was a more complex process than that envisaged by not a few outstanding critics. This book therefore aims to introduce biblical studies to lay people and students not yet acquainted with biblical research. However, I believe that advanced students as well as professional experts will also find its insights to be interesting and helpful, and in some cases even provocative.

 

Another unique feature of this Introduction is the fact that it is rooted in the achievements of Jewish and Israeli scholarship. Since many important contributions to this field were published in Modem Hebrew they are regrettably unknown to the general scholarly community, and even those works that were translated into English long ago are often still relegated to the fringes of scholarship. I have tried to overcome this problem, for instance by referring to the works of Kaufmann and Cassuto on the Pentateuch. I have also made an effort to present the reader with the significant achievements of Israeli experts in the history of the Hebrew language, since the major problem of dating biblical documents can be partially solved with the help of linguistic data. One cannot overestimate the importance of acquiring the ability to differentiate between texts written in Standard Biblical Hebrew, down to the sixth century BCE, and those composed in Late Biblical Hebrew, from the fifth century BCE onwards; it allows one to refute the two extreme positions: the fundamentalist, which seeks to demonstrate the antiquity of all biblical writings, and the revisionist, which tries to show that the entire biblical history is nothing but mere late invention.

 

I hope that after reading this book, the reader will appreciate fully the polyphonic nature of biblical literature. Thus, for instance, the theological message of a Deuteronomic or Priestly author will achieve its full significance once it is separated from — and compared with — the contrasting views of other strands in the biblical tradtion. Recognizing the many authors who were at work in composing the Hebrew Bible does not diminish the Scriptures; our task as critics is not to mingle the many and varied voices into a cacophony, but to listen attentively to their distinctness.

 

Jerusalem: Simor Ltd., 2009. – 679 p. – (Jerusalem Biblical Studies.)

ISBN 965-242-009-10 

 

Preface

Abbreviations

PART 1: THE HISTORICAL LITERATURE

                Chapter 1: The Literary Genres of the Former Prophets

                                1. History and other literary genres

                                2. Folk stories: anecdotes, Märchen ('fairy tales'), sagas, tribal stories, heroic legends

                                3. Compositions from the royal court: lists of officials, administrative lists, annals, history

                                4. From the sanctuaries and priesthood: cultic legends (positive and negative), 'yhwh’s saving acts', temple chronicles

                                5. Stories of the prophets’ disciples: legenda, historiography, biography, paradigm and parable

                Chapter 2: The Composition of the Former Prophets

                                1. The question of uniformity and continuity

                                2. The documentary hypothesis and its decline

                                3. The hypothesis of a deuteronomistic composition

                                4. The Ephraimite and the deuteronomistic compositions and their methods

                                5. The Saul and David chapters

                                6. The organization of the Former Prophets

                Chapter 3: Late Historiography

                                1. The Book of Chronicles: date of composition

                                2. The Book of Chronicles: sources, reliability and ideological goals

                                3. The Book of Ezra-Nehemiah

                                4. Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles

                                5. Nehemiah’s memoirs; the end of Israelite historiography

                Chapter 4: Late Narrative

                                1. The betrothal of Rebekah and the redemption of Ruth

                                2. Naboth’s vineyard and Susanna’s orchard

                                3. Circumcision at Shechem and an altar at the Jordan

                                4. David and Goliath, Ahab and Ben-hadad

                                5. Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah and Nebuzaradan

                                6. The Book of Esther

PART 2: THE COMPOSITION OF THE PENTATEUCH

                Chapter 1: Tradition and Criticism

                                1. The traditional view

                                2. Undermining the traditional view

                                3. The critical method: the Pentateuch’s multiplicity of authors

                Chapter 2: The Documentary Hypothesis: Identifying and Characterizing the Documents

                                1. Identifying one of the documents in the legal portion of the Pentateuch

                                2. Identifying one of the documents in the narrative portions of the Pentateuch

                                3. Connecting the document now identified with the legal material: the Priestly laws

                                4. Additional portions of P

                                5. The inlaying of documents; further identification of P

                                6. The character of P

                                7. Identifying and characterizing D

                                8. Identifying and characterizing the J and E documents

                Chapter 3: Dating the Documents

                                1. De Wette’s hypothesis regarding the date of D

                                2. Dating the remaining documents — Wellhausen and  Kaufmann; conclusions

                                3. More on the dates and origins of D and P

                                4. The question of the Holiness Code (H)

                                5. Series of laws; the sources of Israelite law

                                6. Late strata in the legal compilations

                Chapter 4: Challenges to the Documentary Hypothesis

                                1. Form-criticism

                                2. Additional independent documents; the problem with the documentary hypothesis model

                                3. History of tradition

                                4. Cassuto’s response to the documentary hypothesis

                                5. Factual evidence for historico-literary criticism of the Pentateuch

                Epilogue: The Composition of the Pentateuch in the Light of Biblical Criticism

PART 3: THE PROPHETIC LITERATURE

                Chapter 1 : The Nature of the Prophetic Books

                                1. The first commitment of prophetic words to writing

                                2. Speeches by distinct prophets juxtaposed in one book

                                3. Secondary expansion of prophetic words

                                4. The elaboration of prophetic words by the disciples

                                5. Redaction in prophetic books

                                6. Prophecies of consolation: are they original?

                                7. Profile of a prophetic book: Isaiah 1-39

                Chapter 2: The Arrangement of the Prophetic Books

                                1. Typical structure of the prophetic books

                                2. Smaller collections of prophecies

                                3. Identifying short units

                                4. Principles of the arrangement of units

                                5. The origin and nature of short prophetic units

                Chapter 3: Genres of Prophetic Speech

                                1. Divine word and prophetic speech

                                2. 'Thus has said yhwh' — a messenger formula

                                3. Types of ancient prophecy

                                4. The legacy of ancient prophecy as embedded in classical prophecy

                Chapter 4: Social Functions of the Prophets

                                1. Prophet, king and war; prophecies against the nations

                                2. Prophets and temple

                Chapter 5: The Prophets in the Light of Historico- Literary Criticism

                                1. The prophets vis-à-vis their disciples

                                2. Tradition, reproof and prediction in prophetic speeches

                                3. The attitude to the cult

                Chapter 6: Prophecy and Apocalyptic

                                1. The age of apocalypses; their pseudepigraphic nature

                                2. The reinterpretation of ancient prophecies; inquisitive character; expectation of the 'end'

                                3. Angelology; unity of the worlds

                                4. Predestination and historical perspective

                                5. Universal outlook and the end of this world

PART 4: PSALMODY

                Chapter 1 : Psalmody and the Book of Psalms

                                1. Psalmody and its scope

                                2. The Book of Psalms - its five books; the Elohist Psalter

                                3. Collections within the Psalter; the arrangement of psalms by association

                                4. The alphabetic acrostic psalms and their text

                                5. The text of the Book of Psalms

                Chapter 2: The History of Psalms Literature

                                1. The traditional view and its difficulties

                                2. Historical criticism in the nineteenth century

                                3. The Gunkel school: literary genres and their Sitz im Leben

                                4. Criticism of Gunkel; the West Semitic heritage

                                5. Psalms of the enthronement of yhwh - the hypothesis of Mowinckel

                                6. Dating the psalms on linguistic evidence

                Chapter 3: Literary Aspects of Psalmody

                                1. The Psalms as an expression of creative imagination

                                2. Meir Weiss’s 'total interpretation' method

                                3. Evaluating literary expression according to A.L. Strauss

PART 5: THE WISDOM LITERATURE

                Chapter 1: Wise and Wisdom in the Biblical Period

                                1. Wise and wisdom in the Bible; rhetoric

                                2. Expediency

                                3. Wisdom and morality

                                4. Wisdom and Israelite heritage

                Chapter 2: The Wise and the History of Biblical Proverbs

                                1. The court and the city

                                2. The folk proverb and its reworking

                                3. The admonition

                                4. The development of proverbs: the speech and the debate

                Chapter 3: From Proverbs to Collections

                                1. The creation and arrangement of collections in the Book of Proverbs

                                2. The editing of the Book of Proverbs

                                3. Ecclesiastes

                                4. Ben Sira

                                5. Tractate A vot

                Chapter 4: The Proverb and Other Wisdom Genres

                                1. The characteristics of the proverb

                                2. The fable and the quotation proverb

                                3. The riddle and the serial saying

                                4. The numerical saying

                Chapter 5: Divine Wisdom

                                1. Wisdom as a divine trait

                                2. Wisdom as a divine gift; wise men and prophets

                                3. Divine wisdom and human wisdom: the debate

                                4. Divine wisdom becomes sectarian

Epilogue

Index of Biblical Passages

Index of Authors